Strangers on a Train

Sweltering Misery

It’s hot. Early Skia is known for being hot, but today is particularly vicious, and nobody in their right mind is out in the desert sun. It’s not much past noon, and the air inside the train car is stuffy and miserable. Desmond can’t really afford to travel in a private car, so he’s stuck in a compartment with four strangers. The car is only supposed to hold three, but two of them are children, so they’re traveling two for one ticket and the train is full enough that they’re aren’t extra free seats. They’re out of Astam down to White Haven, with all stops.

The express only runs twice a week, and the tickets are prohibitively expensive. The small window is curtained over to keep out the worst of the sun while still having a bit of light, but it’s barely enough to see by and the train isn’t wasting lantern fuel. The woman across from him is straining her eyes to read while the two children next to her bicker over some game. They’re annoying to be sure, but not particularly annoying on the scale of children. The other two are traveling together, though it’s hard to tell if their a couple or not. He is older than her, though not excessively so, and they’re clearly close, the way they share the newspaper is evidence enough of that, but not overly affectionate.

Desmond feels like he knows the woman from somewhere but he can’t quite put a finger on it. She looks to be about his age, though it’s always hard to guess with strangers and politeness forbids asking, particularly of a woman, and even especially if she seemed to be past forty. She is moderately attractive, with delicate facial features and thick brown hair that she has folded up into an elegant twist with two or three gray strands. She doesn’t seem keen on conversation though, and it’s hot and miserable enough that nobody seems inclined to talk, which is just as well.

He pulls out the letter that he had received asking him to come to White Haven and reads it over. He knows what it says, and what it doesn’t say, despite multiple readings. The letter was the first he’d heard from his brother in over two years, and he still isn’t sure what to make of it. When his brother first moved out to White Haven, he’d been skeptical and when the letters had started to become more erratic, he’d been slightly worried, though Carter had never been the most organized of souls, and from those few he did send, it seemed more likely that he just didn’t prioritize writing.

He hasn’t been on a train ride this long since he had gone down to visit Carver when his brother was studying in the College in the Rowe. Years ago, when it was still Optilocus and he was still a young man. That train ride was quite long, more so because trains had become faster since. He remembered that there had been an unusually hot day in late Fi, when he’d been going to visit his brother at the end of exams, where a young woman had actually passed out from the heat. He’d been sharing the car with her and had used some of the water he’d brought to dab at her forhead and wake her up, and agreed to sit facing away from her so she could strip down her clothing a little to cool with out any impropriety.

Desond tried to shake himself out of the memory. That had been nearly two decades ago, the Aderfod before the revolution. Things were different now. He looked up at the pair across from him and as the woman handed one of the pages back to her traveling companion, he caught a clear look at her face and swallowed. His face flushed and he looked away. It was probably not her. That had been years ago, and so much had shifted. He was just imagining things. Like the sudden look of recognition she gave him. Probably imagined. He looked down at the letter again, trying to focus. The train would arrive in not two long, and he needed to figure out what he was going to say to his brother.